I, Bellatrix
by Gamma Orionis
Summary: The Harry Potter books, as Bellatrix Lestrange experienced them. Written for Luck O' The Irish Seamione's Different Perspective Challenge on the HPFC forum.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Notes: Written for Luck O' The Irish Seamione's Different Perspective Challenge on the HPFC forum. The idea of this is to rewrite the series – or a significant portion of the series – from the perspective of a character other than Harry.

First disclaimer: I own nothing

Second disclaimer: I am taking this one chapter at a time, so it's going to move slowly. So let's not comment requesting updates, okay? Let's comment in a way that demonstrates you read it.

Third disclaimer: If I ever, at any point in this story, make any errors regarding anything pertaining to religion, I apologize in advance. I mean no disrespect, I simply did not grow up listening to sermons. I'm getting my information from Bible study books. I may make mistakes.

Now, without further ado, _I, Bellatrix._

)O(

The flesh of Bellatrix's arm seared, and she bent in on herself, clutching it. Half a year – _six months, one week, three days _ – since the Dark Lord's return to power, she had learned not to scream when the Dark Mark burned. It only made the pain worse.

She scrabbled at it with her fingernails, tearing her flesh, trying to rip the pain away, tears streaming down her cheeks. _Please, Lord, let the pain stop!_

At last, at long last, the burning subsided, and she lay panting on the thin, hard cot, blood from the injuries she had inflicted on her own arm coating her.

The Dark Mark sneered at her from under the blood, grinning sinisterly. Her flesh throbbed, blood pumping out and washing the dirt away.

Even as she looked at it, the mark burned red-hot again, and her whole body shook eith sobs at the raging pain. She clasped her forearm, pressing it against her torso, inadvertently smearing herself with blood and grinding dirt into the cuts.

_What a sight you are, Bellatrix_, scolded the part of her mind that spoke in her mother's voice. Its tone was disapproving. _Covered in dirt and blood. Bad girl, getting yourself so dirty…_

"I'm sorry, Mother," she said out loud, though her voice was so disused that the words came out in a croak.

At last, the burning subsided a second time. Bellatrix lay limp upon the cot, sobbing brokenly, all the pain now shallow and physical, instead of the deep feeling that shot through her, cutting to her very core when the Dark Mark burned. She could see, through vision that was blurred and starry, chunks of her own flesh lying on herself and her bed where she had ripped them out of her arm. But that was pain she could stand. It was the Dark Mark's burn, and knowing that she could not return to her Lord, no matter how she wanted to, that hurt her.

If she could just have some food, perhaps wash the cuts out, she was sure she would feel much better. But she couldn't. As it was, she was dizzy with pain, and her mind was incapable of focusing. She trembled and twitched and cried, and her mother's scolding grew louder until she pressed her hands over her ears to block it out.

"Go away, Mother," she whispered. "You're dead, go away, leave me alone…" She repeated the words over and over, a prayer that lulled her into a soft, almost meditative state. "You're dead, go away, leave me alone, you're dead, go away, leave me alone–"

Bellatrix was startled by a crashing noise. She jolted up off the cot, stumbled forwards and flung herself against the bars of her cell, looking for the source of the sound. For a moment, all was silent, then great cry went up – a joyful cry, almost akin, Bellatrix thought, to the sound souls would make when the gates of heaven opened on Judgement Day. And she heard, through the commotion, an almost-familiar voice crying out "The Dark Lord! He has come for us at last!"

Bellatrix added her own wild shriek of joy to the wails of her companions. She could hear cell doors crashing open, one after the other, and plastered her body against the bars of her own cell, flinging her fragile form against them again and again. And ever time she heaved herself against them, she cried out through vocal cords straining to remember how to work, "My Lord, my Lord, my Lord!"

The bars gave way and she tumbled out onto the ground, scrambling up immediately and rushing towards the source of the commotion. Several prisoners were already out of their cells, and Bellatrix thought perhaps she even recognized one particular gaunt, wasted man who was holding onto the wall to remain upright. But she paid him no attention, and raised her ragged voice to a scream to make herself heard over the others.

"The Dark Lord! Where is the Dark Lord?"

The cries of joy quieted, as people looked for their leader. At last, a cloaked figure stepped from the shadows, and lowered his hood.

His eyes shone scarlet in the dusty darkness of Azkaban prison, eyes set in a strange, reptilian face that Bellatrix scarcely recognized as that of the Lord she remembered. But she could see hints of the familiar face in him, and his new visage was beautiful to her. She fell to her knees and scrambled forward, kissing the hem of his robes. "My Lord, my Lord, I know you would return, I never lost faith…"

"Get up, Bellatrix," he ordered. Bellatrix complied instantly, springing to her feet and standing before him, spine as straight as she could manage, head bowed modestly.

"My three most faithful are here…" he said, and she fancied she heard pride in his voice, though perhaps that was merely a figment of her mind. "Rodolphus, come stand by your wife. And Rabastan, by your brother."

Rodolphus… Rabastan… the names stirred the faintest sluggish inklings of memories in Bellatrix, though she could not quite place them. It did not matter, the Dark Lord was here for her at last, the Dark Lord had returned…

She felt someone clutch and her shoulder, and spun she around, throwing herself half off-balance and having to grab at the person to stay upright. The gaunt man she had noticed earlier was clinging to her, and when she stumbled against him, he grabbed her by the front of her ragged prison uniform and pressed his mouth over hers in a foul kiss.

She cried, pulled away and tumbled back, sprawling on the dirty stone floor. There was laughter, scratchy guffaws, and breaking through that, a cold, mirthless chuckle. Bellatrix looked up, and saw the Dark Lord gazing down at her with a look that could only be described as contempt.

"You do not wish to greet your husband?"

_My husband._

_Rodolphus…_

So he was familiar. She closed her eyes and tried to draw to mind a mental image to connect with the name. Her mind gave her a blur of grey and brown, of warm, rough hands, a rugged body, scratchy kisses and sweet cologne. She smiled in spite of herself – these mostly-forgotten memories were pleasant.

Then other memories forced their way in. A stinging patch on her cheek, remnant of a blow. Pathetic whimpering and pleading. Stony silence. Lying in bed, listening to stifled sobbing. She shivered, and looked back up at the man who had kissed her, Rodolphus, her husband. There was hurt in his eyes.

"Bella?" he croaked.

She supposed she was meant to show affection for him, and clambered to her feet. But she could not summon the will to touch him.

Looking over his shoulder, she saw others, some of whose faces jolted disconnected flashes of memory – _a quiet sneer, a harsh laugh, a shove, a curse_ – some of whom were utterly unfamiliar. But her gaze was drawn back always to the Dark Lord.

He was not looking at her. His eerie, crimson eyes swept the entire group, as he appraised prisoners, watching those who shrank away from him, those who bowed, and those who grovelled at his feet for forgiveness and mercy.

Bellatrix looked back to Rodolphus, and saw a man clinging to his shoulder.

Rodolphus was bone-thin, his body weakened by the years in prison, and the other Death Eaters all looked different shades of near-death, but this man was the worst off of all. His prison uniform was little more than bloody rags and hung off him, revealing a body so emaciated that it was no more than a skeleton covered by papery, scabbed skin. Every bone was completely visible through it, and when he moved, Bellatrix could see the tendons straining and slithering beneath the skin like worms.

But that was not the worst of it. His skin, unnaturally white, was blotched with dark patches where the skin was thicker. He seemed to have tried to rip some of these patches off, leaving horrible, deep, infected scabs covering his arms, legs and face. His eyes were swollen, and by the way he was feeling in front of him with his hands, searching for Rodolphus, he could very well have been blind. But when his head turned, his silhouette displayed without the interference of the grotesque damage to his skin. Illuminated by a flickering torch in a bracket, Bellatrix recognized him and shrieked.

"Rabastan!"

The memories that had come back to her for Rodolphus had been disjointed and abstract, but in her mind there was a perfect, clear image of this man, of Rabastan, her brother-in-law, before Azkaban. He had been beautiful then, and now, he was… he was…

She reached out with shaking hands to touch his face, wanting to feel to see whether there really was skin covering it, or if it was just bone with infected scabs pressed on. Pus wept from the lumps of clotted blood, and he had a foul scent of sickness about him, worse than the smell of decay that hung around any of the others.

"Don't touch me," he said, in a voice that was high and reedy, as she extended a dirty finger towards him. "Sickness will spread…"

Rodolphus recoiled, and gave the man a shove, sending him to sprawl on the ground just as Bellatrix had. "Get off!"

"Rodolphus," Rabastan managed, pushing himself up onto his knees and reaching out. "Don't you recognize me?"

Rodolphus lashed out, kicking him in the ribs. There was an audible snap, and Rabastan crumpled.

"Leper," Rodolphus said, spitting on the ground.

Then the Dark Lord spoke from the shadows, where he had been watching all of this. His voice, high and cold and clear, silenced all immediately, and he spoke with a calm authority that kept anyone from even thinking of trying to interrupt.

"Your brother, Rodolphus. That is your brother whom you dismissed as diseased and dirty. A fine way to greet Rabastan."

Rodolphus's face went as pale as his brother's, but the Dark Lord paid him no more attention. He swept past him, and stood over Rabastan, who was curled into a ball, paralyzed by the pain in his rib.

The Dark Lord drew his wand, and pointed it at Rabastan. There was another audible cracking, and Rabastan cried out again, but halfway through, his cry turned from pain to relief. Bellatrix watched in wonder as he uncurled – still emaciated, still scabbed and disgusting, but now able to move, and knelt before the Dark Lord, reaching his hands upward towards him, in something between begging for an embrace and hailing a god.

"My Lord," Rabastan whispered. "If you will… you can make me clean…"

There was silence, then the Dark Lord spoke.

"I can. You have, after all, been faithful. And the Dark Lord rewards those who are faithful."

Bellatrix and the other Death Eaters watched in awe as the Dark Lord rested a hand on Rabastan's forehead, holding it still and swept his wand over his face. Bellatrix could hear him whispering a soft, musical incantation under his breath, and she staggered, literally weakened by the beauty of the sound of his voice. And beyond that, she could see the infection being siphoned off Rabastan's body. The skin that had been torn away was knitting itself back together, healing over the scabs, leaving only the faintest, palest traces of scars. As the incantation continued, the dark patches that had marred the skin faded away. And, at last, with one more chanted verse, the Dark Lord passing his wand in an intricate pattern over Rabastan's eyes, the swelling in them subsided, and Rabastan blinked, looking up at the Dark Lord with utter amazement and adoration.

"You are clean," the Dark Lord said.

Rabastan broke into sobs of gratitude, and grasped the hem of the Dark Lord's robes, kissing them. "My Lord, there are no words to express my gratitude for you…"

Bellatrix was not nearly as articulate in her amazement. She let out a wail, and fell to her knees, bowing before her Lord.

She had witnessed a miracle.

If she had ever had the faintest shadow of doubt that the Dark Lord was her saviour, it was gone now.


	2. Chapter 2

Bellatrix was in tears, tears of joy, and she could not stop sobbing. She felt nothing but relief at her release from Azkaban and joy at her Lord's presence. He was taking them away from the prison in pairs, and by the time he came for Bellatrix, she could do nothing but cling to his hand and cry.

The place she was brought to was unfamiliar to her – a small wooden building lit by flickering candles. Bellatrix could not stand up, she tumbled onto the floor and glanced around through teary eyes.

_Beautiful…_

She could make out vague shapes around her – moving shapes that could only have been her fellow prisoners (_escapees now_), and still shapes that she took to be statues. Bellatrix struggled to her feet and moved forward, entranced, until one of the figures became clear.

It was a statue of a woman, a woman dressed in veils with her hands folded piously at her breast, but Bellatrix could tell immediately that this woman was no penitent saint. She was completely captivated by the statue and reached out to touch the woman's strong-featured face, sure that as soon as her hands met with the marble, she would find this woman to be flesh and blood. There was no other explanation, surely, for someone so beautiful, so enthralling to be carved from stone than that they were real.

"Bellatrix."

Bellatrix jolted, startled by the Dark Lord's voice, and even more by the use of her name. In the years in Azkaban, her name had been one thing that she had never forgotten. Her sisters had slipped from her mind, her husband, even the Death Eaters at moments, but her name – _Bellatrix_ – had stayed safe in her mind, untouched by hysteria or insanity. But she had not heard it spoken aloud in so long…

Her hands fell away from the statue as she quickly turned around and bowed low, not daring to look the Dark Lord in the eye. "My Lord," she whispered, voice thick with emotion.

He was silent for some moments, then looked at the statue Bellatrix had been staring at. "Does this statue interest you, Bellatrix?"

"It does, my Lord." She hoped desperately that this answer would please him, that it was the answer he wanted from her.

A moment more of silence, then he said, "This is a church… a parish church that we deemed safe to stay for the time being."

"My Lord," she murmured, unsure as to why he was telling her this. She kept her eyes on the ground, her head bowed respectfully.

"Did you attend church in your youth, Bellatrix?"

"I did, my Lord."

"Then," he said, not looking at her but instead at the statue, "Do you not recognize this… fine woman?"

"I… I do not, my Lord," Bellatrix whispered, ashamed. If the Dark Lord expected her to remember, she was doing wrong not to.

"It is the Magdalene, Bellatrix," he told her, his voice soft and almost expressionless. Then he turned away, leaving Bellatrix to stare at the statue.

The Magdalene. Mary Magdalene, the whore who Christ granted forgiveness, and who was sat at his right hand. Bellatrix remembered the stories now.

_Easter. The Black children – Bella, eight, Andi, six, Cissy, four, Sirius, three, Regulus, baby – in the gardens, celebrating the end of Lent with their own childish Passion play. Already the children had mock-crucified little Sirius, and now he was curled in the space under a garden bench, pretending to be dead, prepared to crawl out the second Bella and Cissy turned their backs. Bella, upset that she was cast as Mary Magdalene in their play-acting, instead of being given the far more desirable part of the Madonna, which was always awarded to Cissy. Andi, reminding her that the Virgin Mary never did anything after she gave birth to Christ, but that the Magdalene was an apostle, almost._

_No._

_Stop thinking!_

She turned away from the Magdalene.

The other prisoners had drifted to the front of the little church and they knelt before the altar. The Dark Lord paced back and forth in front of them, ghostly and ethereal and _powerful_. Bellatrix dropped hurriedly to her knees and bowed her head, peering at him through her matted hair.

"My loyal followers," he said, looking around at those assembled, "you have done so well. You have done far, far better than the cowards who evaded Azkaban by denying me. And each of you shall be rewarded accordingly."

He moved slowly around the group, in between the unclean but ecstatic followers who knelt before him, and came to a halt before Bellatrix. She looked up at him in awe, clasping her hands at her breast. "My Lord…"

But the Dark Lord paid no attention to her. He moved on, stopping before each of his followers to appraise them. Bellatrix watched him with adoration – the Dark Lord was so far above human that she simply could not tear her eyes away from him. He was divinity sent to Earth, of that she had no doubt.

He spoke again, but Bellatrix could not hear the words, only the sound of his voice, so high and clear and gloriously cold. She shivered with delight, uncaring of the words it conveyed, until she heard her own name breaking through the haze of beautiful sound.

"Bellatrix. Come with me."

She was surprised – she hadn't been expecting personal recognition. While she did consider herself – with good reason – the Dark Lord's most faithful servant, she never thought he would acknowledge her as such. She was happy with her private knowledge that she was loyal to him.

Bellatrix struggled to her feet and limped around the other escapees, bowing before her Lord. "Master," she murmured.

"Rise, Bellatrix," he told her and she complied immediately. He beckoned to her, indicating that she should step out of the sanctuary, through into a dark back room. Bellatrix was shivering, her teeth were chattering from cold and fear, and in the cover of darkness, anything could have been lurking in that room. But as soon as the Dark Lord stepped in after her, she felt safe.

Candles flared up in the corners of the room, bathing it in weak, flickering light. Bellatrix swallowed. Illuminated by the candles, the Dark Lord looked more otherworldly than ever. Surely he was more than human, surely a human could not be so… so God-like.

The room was small, cramped and rather dirty, its walls made up of wooden slats through which cold air filtered, but in the centre of the room stood a large, deep basin of steaming water.

"My Lord?"

"You need to wash, Bellatrix," he told her. "There are fourteen years of dirt that need to be cleaned from you. Undress."

Bellatrix slipped out of her prison robes without hesitation, feeling not the least bit of shame as the Dark Lord's eyes fell on her body. The way he looked at her was not how a man looked at a woman, but how a master looked at a servant.

She stepped slowly into the water. It burned her skin, but this was the first time she had felt heat for years and she relished it.

"The heat will cleanse you," the Dark Lord told her. He put one hand upon her head, forcing her to her knees. The water came up to her neck, and she struggled to keep her mouth above the level of the water.

"You will be born again when you rise from the water," he whispered, then pushed her under.

Bellatrix's lungs filled with water and she struggled wildly. Her eyes blurred under the water and she squeezed them shut – a mistake, as it plunged her into total darkness.

_Drowning-_

_Fourteen years surrounded by water-_

_Can't breathe-_

She was sure that she was going to die, positive of it. Fourteen years in Azkaban, and she was going to die in a bath at the Dark Lord's hand.

But then, just as suddenly as she had been pushed under, she felt her head break the surface. She retched, water heaving out of her lungs, and the Dark Lord waited patiently until she was breathing again.

"My Lord," she gasped. "Why–"

"Rebirth, Bellatrix," he told her. "You were unclean, Azkaban made you so. But you have been born again of water. Now you are purified, and now you may enter my ranks again, a new, stronger woman." He studied her, then reached out and touched her forehead. "You have been faithful, Bellatrix. And the rewards that you deserve shall be given in time."

"I need no more reward than to serve you, my Lord," Bellatrix murmured, looking at him worshipfully.

"Then that is the reward you shall have," he told her. "Now rise," he added. "There are more people who must be cleansed."


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Notes: Err... apologies for the _entire year_ it's taken me to update this.

)O(

There were not words enough in the world to describe how Bellatrix felt. Being released from Azkaban and cleansed by the Dark Lord was a true resurrection – more than the fairy story of the Crucifixion that she knew so well. This was so far from that that it was scarcely right to call it by the same name – this had brought her into a state of being that she could not have imagined otherwise. Even as she lay upon the hard wood of the pew with a hymn book for a pillow, she felt as though she were flying.

Rodolphus's – _Rodolphus, yes, she could remember him now, memories were coming back to her, surely because of the Dark Lord's working of miracles upon her_ – breathing was audible from some distance away. She listened to it, and it was an oddly comforting sound. He sounded peaceful, and it had been so very long since Bellatrix had been privy to peace.

She touched her face, feeling the crevices and ridges that her bones had formed in her skin. She could feel her skull through her flesh – it was like touching wood through paper, touching metal through cloth… touching anything hard through a thin and slippery outer covering. She could feel her skin slipping over the bone, barely lubricated by a layer of blood, she thought. Feeling this way was more akin to being like one of the dark and terrible creatures in the engravings that had decorated the pages of Mother's prayer book than a human being. Those terrible creatures had haunted her nightmares for years with their hollow black eyes, their wasted and skull-like visages with hollowed out cheeks and mouths, and their terrifyingly skeletal bodies.

Once, she had dared to ask Father what the creatures in the prayer book were. She had brought it to him, open to a page with one of the most twisted engravings and demanded to know what it was for.

The page she had shown him had depicted dozens of skeleton demon creatures, and Cygnus had frowned at it.

"Oh, Bellatrix." He shut the book, shaking his head reprovingly. "You oughtn't read that. It isn't a book for girls – especially not ones like yourself – young," he added, waving one hand through the air as if _like yourself_ was a suitable enough explanation without any further clarification. "It will only trouble you. Demons are not something that little girls should be thinking of."

And she had agreed – like the fool she was, she had agreed not to read any further, and now that she was older, she had only thoughts of demons in her mind and no true understanding of them.

Or perhaps she _did_ understand them, far better than she would have liked to. Perhaps she understood because she _was_ one.

_No! No, you are not a demon! The Dark Lord has cleansed you, you are pure, you are not of the devil…_

Bellatrix fell from the pew, landing on the ground in a crouch, wincing in pain as her fragile bones creaked and ached. She managed to heave herself to her feet by gripping onto the back of one of the other long, wooden benches – _it must have been her imagination, but she could have sworn that she saw people sitting at them_ – and stagger towards the door. Her feet bumped against something soft and lumpy, but she didn't care, for all her energy was focussed on getting her closer to the doors, outside…

A thin shaft of moonlight was just visible in the crack around the doorframe, and that was what she reached for. It was just a little light, but a little light was all that she needed or wanted.

Her hands scrabbled at the handle, and she wrenched the door open, letting ice-cold air and even colder moonlight spill over her. The breath left her lungs, but it was _good_, oh so good…

She held her arms out to her sides, like outstretched wings – like angel wings – like she was about to fly. Her head fell backwards so that she might absorb the full, painfully cold beauty of everything in the world around her.

Perhaps she looked foolish or mad, but she could not find it even in the most hidden, most willing to feel shame parts of her mind to care. All that she could do was stand beneath the moon and let her tears freeze on her cheeks.

Her hair and skin was still slightly wet from the baptism that she had received at the hands of the Dark Lord, and even as she stood, Bellatrix was sure that ice crystals must have been forming on her. Perhaps by the time she was pulled back inside, her hair would be covered in frost. Then she might look like an angel – angels in her mother's books – and the paintings that had hung in her private room – had always had pale, streaming hair, never the mad black curls that Bellatrix had been cursed with.

"Bellatrix… "

The voice was very far away, and she could not quite determine whose it was, though she did not try to pretend that she was attempting to. It was just a voice, just a voice that would speak to her and that she did not truly need to listen to if she did not want to.

"Bellatrix…"

It was getting closer now, and she could tell the gender, at least. It was a male voice, warm and ragged and deep and it stirred something inside her. She had heard that voice – and not so very long ago, either.

"Bellatrix…"

God was speaking to her. God. He had taken her, his daughter, his mad little girl who he loved when her human parents would not, and now he would speak to her and–

No, he would not, for God did not love her. That was a nursery story told to little girls like Narcissa who wanted to believe in a loving creator. Even while Druella had still been telling little Cissy about the great forgiveness of God, she had been reprimanding Bellatrix and telling her that God would see her sins. When Bellatrix first used a curse upon a little rabbit, Druella had told her that God wanted her to be kind to animals, and when Bellatrix had tried to argue that surely God did not care so very much about one little rabbit and one little girl, Druella's voice had risen to a hysterical shriek and she had told Bellatrix that now her sin was defying the Lord, and that she would burn in Hell for it.

But Bellatrix was not burning. She was freezing.

"Bellatrix!"

The voice had become urgent, almost, and felt very close. Bellatrix wanted to look about to see who was speaking, but she had closed her eyes and could not open them now. Her eyelids felt stiff – for perhaps ice was already covering them over. Perhaps it would not be very long before she was completely encased in it, safe and cold and untouchable…

Arms wrapped around her from behind, and Bellatrix screamed, lashing out and trying to strike whoever it was who had tried to embrace her. Her arm struck what she presumed to be someone's face, and they reeled backwards, letting go of her. She heard a thump as a body hit the ground.

Bellatrix turned around, fearing who or what she might see. Who could possibly have come out to try to hold her - the devil, perhaps? One of the demons from her mother's books, come to claim her as their own?

No, she thought, as she looked down upon the crumpled form that had fallen to the ground. If this was a demon, then it was a pitiful one indeed, and nothing that she could truly fear. She leaned down slowly, prodding at it with her fingers.

It reached out and grasped her wrist in a grip so tight that she thought that her brittle bones would break. Bellatrix cried out, trying to lash at it again, but she only managed to lose her balance as she tried both to strike and to pull away, and she tumbled to the ground as well.

"Bellatrix..."

It had a man's voice – a familiar man's voice, though Bellatrix thought that she had never heard it sounding croaking and miserable like this before. She blinked slowly, looking at it, and in the moonlight, she could make out features.

Oh.

It was Rodolphus – Rodolphus from Azkaban, Rodolphus, who had been her husband once, and she did not know how he could be so much stronger than her. In her broken, fragile memories, he was always weak and she the strong one.

Perhaps Azkaban had simply taken a far greater toll upon her than him.

Perhaps she was weak in truth, and Azkaban had only shown her how much.

She sank slowly to her knees – the frost upon the grass burned her legs as it had not done to the toughened soles of her feet – and reached out with shaking hands to touch his cheeks. He looked up at her with wide, wary eyes, flinching back.

_Why?_

"Do not hurt me," he breathed, raising one skeletal hand to shield his face from her. "Don't hurt me, don't hurt me, don't hurt me…" He repeated it in a soft chant, like a prayer, like a choir chanting a devotion…

Bellatrix withdrew and dropped her head, pressing her hands over her mouth and digging her nails into her cheeks before she dropped them and looked at her husband with eyes that were full of tears that she could not fully justify.

"Rodolphus?" she croaked softly.

"I missed you," he told her, his voice rising in pitch to a small, hysterical cry. "My wife… my wife…"

She lowered her hand again and laid it slowly against his forehead. His skin felt hot, dry and feverish beneath her touch, and his breath was loud and ragged. There was a stench of illness about him, hanging thickly, almost like perfume…

Bellatrix closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose while her hands slowly trailed over Rodolphus's skin. She could remember – remember at the very back of her mind – a time when she had touched his face and felt his skin crease beneath her hands as he smiled, and when his hands had tangled so sweetly in her hair and he had drawn her into a kiss. And she remembered the perfume.

_Oh, dearest God, the perfume._

The smell had clogged her nostrils with every breath that she took in, and Bellatrix thought that perhaps she might have teased Rodolphus for it. How could she not have, when he made it so easy? She felt that she could remember waving her hand before her face, telling him that a man's cologne should not smell so strong or so foul, but perhaps that had not happened and she was now merely filling her mind with false stories that she had thought of in Azkaban and convinced herself to be true. But she _thought_ that there were little fragments of real memories – half formed and so unclear that all she could see in her mind's eye was a mess of shattered colours and blurry movements – and it seemed to her as though she might have laughed, and he laughed with her, good-naturedly, heartily, before his mouth came down upon hers and silenced her with a kiss.

She lifted her hands to her nose now and sniffed them, expecting for the perfume to still be on them – but, of course, they smelled only of dirt so deeply engraved into her skin that all the cleansing in the world would never remove it, and of her own sweat, and Rodolphus's.

"Bellatrix…"

She looked down upon him. There was a feeling in her throat as though she wanted to cry, but she could not bring tears to her eyes, no matter how hard she tried. Her voice choked as she tried to speak.

"Y- yes? Rodolphus?"

"I have missed you so…"

If she could, she would have said the same, but it would have been a lie, and Bellatrix did not wish to lie to a man who she felt that she should love. She could not recall thinking of him in Azkaban – though, with so much time that had passed, she _must_ have. She shook her head slowly, moving backwards on her knees and wiping her hands upon the frosted grass.

"Have you not missed me, then?" he asked, his voice rising to a hysterical cry. He swiped at her with clawed hands, and Bellatrix screamed, for they looked so like the Devil's scrabbling fingers. And in the darkness and moonlight, Bellatrix was sure that she saw Rodolphus's face twist into a wicked leer, and she was looking directly into the eyes of Satan.

She did not scream, for what good could a scream do? She only bent in on herself, burying her face in her hands so that she would not see – if He wished to drag her down to Hell, then he might have her. She would not resist, for all her fear.

But no cold, inhuman skeleton fingers wrapped around her, and the ground did not split open to swallow her. Instead, a hot palm rested against her cheek and she heard a strangled sob.

"Will you not come back inside with your husband, Bellatrix?" he asked, once more in that strained, high, hysterical voice. "Come and lie with me?"

"No!" Bellatrix thrashed away from his touch. "No!"

He made a soft whining noise, like a dog who had been kicked. "Please… Please, Bellatrix, I said that I've missed you…"

"I won't!" She tumbled to her back and scuttled away on her hands like a crab. His touch burned her chilled skin, and she _didn't want him anywhere near her. _She wanted him far away. She didn't want him to touch her.

_Why does the Dark Lord not touch me? He is my Master – can he not spare a second touch for me?_

She would have given so very much for him to lay his hand upon her cheek instead of letting Rodolphus desecrate the body that the Dark Lord had cleansed… she desired nothing more than that…

Rodolphus said nothing more. He heaved himself to his feet and moved slowly backwards, feeling for the handles of the church doors without for a second taking his eyes off of her. Bellatrix did not dare even exhale a breath until he had gone.

When she was once again alone, she fell down upon the grass, spreading her arms and staring up at the sky with wide, glazed-over eyes.

_So many stars…_

It had been so terribly long since she had seen more than the handful of stars that were occasionally visible outside her slit of a window in Azkaban. She had almost come to believe that there was only a small patch of light in the whole night sky, so accustomed had she become to seeing only the black stone of the ceiling of her cell.

She lifted one hand slowly, and her lips formed numbers as she tried to count them. _One, two, three…_ But they disappeared as she tried to look at them, and then winked back into existence when she looked away, until she was ready to scream with anger at them.

Her hand fell down and rested over her mouth, silencing a little growl of frustration. Her lips felt cold and dry and thin.

_Once she had had a beautiful mouth, touched by so many men, light little kisses exchanged at dances and deeper, passionate ones given in shadows…_

Would any man ever desire to kiss her again?

Azkaban had ruined her, of that she had no doubt. She had been beautiful once. People had said so, _everyone_ had said so – how lovely the oldest Black girl was. They had crooned over her skin, the milk white that they had all desired, and her hair, black and thick and satin smooth to all their invasive caresses of it, and her figure, which women wished for and men wished for their wives to have. Men had looked on her with such lust, and she had played to their desires, leading them along as easily as a shepherd led sheep, drawing them along with her and making them into her slaves.

As good as her slaves.

She had never truly desired the men – or, rather, her body had desired them as any woman's body would, and she had been more than willing to satiate her desires before she let them go, but she had never wished for anything more. They had never interested her as more than bodies to kiss and take, never made her desire anything but the simplest of nights in their beds. When she grew tired of them, she would let them go with fluttering kisses and assurances that they meant more to her than any of their fellows, the same assurances to every single one, and they would believe her. She could do it, she could _make_ them believe it.

No longer.

She had not led on men like that even before Azkaban – her work with the Death Eaters and her devotion to the Dark Lord had taken too much of her time and her energy to leave her enough time to engage in her hobby of driving men mad.

_And she had started to desire one as more than just a body…_

She had given away the opportunity, and now… would _she _ever desire to kiss a man again?

_Yes, but not from a man who had ever shared a kiss with her, even before she became like this…_

_Not with a man who had ever been willing._

_Not with a man who she had been able to seduce._

She thought that she had memories of him, of being in bed with him, of his hands on her, running over her body slowly and reverently, but she might have been wrong. She suspected she was – the memory was to beautiful to be real. It was surely something that her mind had created to please her while she was locked in her cell in Azkaban, surely nothing real, surely nothing…

There was a low, cooing sound from some distance away, and Bellatrix leapt, shooting upright and into a crouch, scuttling backwards. Her head cracked against the slats of the church wall, and stars popped before her eyes. It had been so terribly long since she had heard such a noise – could it be an owl, perhaps? Or a bat? She had long since forgotten the difference between the noises that animals of the night made…

_She had become an animal of the night._

_She had_ always_ been an animal of the night._

The creature fell silent, to her most profound relief, and Bellatrix closed her eyes and curled on the ground against the wall, pressing one ear deep into the frosty grass and her back against the stones. It was nice – it made her feel almost safe to have stones against her back.

It was familiar, at least.

She had spent so long with her back pressed against the stone of her cell, the cold air biting her raw. It had become her way of life to lie on the hard ground so that she was bruised on her waking, to press herself against stones that would never give, as if she wished to convince herself that they never would and she would never be free, and now she _was_ free, she was never going to have to go back to Azkaban, and lying in a position that was so still and uncomfortable, and lying outside, where it was as cold as her cell, was oddly comforting. No, not _oddly_ – it was _frighteningly_ comforting. _Wrongly_ comforting.

"Come inside, Bellatrix."

Her Lord's voice was as cold as the air around her, and it too was a comfort to her. It felt right to hear it, for she had imagined it so many times when she lay still and alone with no hopes of being saved…

But she _had_ been saved. The Dark Lord had come for her at last, had saved her at last, had taken her at last… and what joy that should have brought her. Yet she could summon little emotion, even when he addressed her from so close at hand.

She turned her head, her taut and frozen-over skin stretching over the bones in her spine, and she looked with eyes that were wide and fearful at her Master. He stood framed in the church's doorway, and he was giving her a look as dark and inscrutable as the night air around her.

"Master?"

"I did not give you leave to go outside," he told her.

"I apologize, my Lord," she said immediately, struggling to her feet. Her arms and legs were numb and her whole body was stinging from the fold, and even the act of climbing to her feet took far too much effort. How could she ever be of use to the Dark Lord if this was how weak she was now? How much damage had Azkaban done to her that she was not even aware of yet?"

"I shall not spend my precious time keeping you from freezing to death," he told her, rather sharply, and Bellatrix simply bowed her head and nodded solemnly. She was overcome with loathing for herself instantly for disappointing him, and she privately vowed to please him more in future. She could not afford to make him unhappy, could not afford to displease him in even the slightest way after what he had done for her.

_He has saved you. Never forget that he has saved you, never let yourself forget, never let yourself stop feeling gratitude for it. _

"I am sorry, Master," she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking too terribly from shame. "Please forgive me for- for–" _Inconveniencing you? Displeasing you? Wasting your time, which is so much more valuable than I am… especially as I am in this state…_ "Please forgive me."

"Forgiveness is not something easily granted," he told her, without so much as a hint of emotion in his voice. "Nor should it be, as you are well aware."

A flush crept up Bellatrix's face, warming her skin, albeit in the most unpleasant way possible. She pressed her hands to her colouring cheeks to warm her frozen fingers.

"No, naturally not, my Lord," she murmured.

He said nothing more, and Bellatrix held her breath awaiting a curse, or at least a stronger reprimand than the one that she had already received, but none came. Her throat tightened with fear while she waited.

"Inside," he said once more, and Bellatrix bowed her head so that her long, matted curls would shield her face, and she hurried inside past him. She dared not look at her Master now, and immediately huddled on the pew again, before the door banged shut. Tears stung in her eyes, for she loathed that she had done something that went against her Lord's wishes – and so soon after he had saved her to boot. It was terrible of her – so horribly ungrateful…

_Ungrateful girl, you should learn respect for your elders. There is a place in Hell for impudent children._

"Stop it, Mother!" She pressed her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut in a futile attempt to block out her mother's reprimands. They had been inside her for so long, and now they still echoed within her head, for now Druella was raging at her from the very darkest depths of her mind, and as much as she tried, she could not escape her own mind.

Oh, how she would love to.

How she would love to be able to cast her mother's voice from her.

It had been there, nagging her quietly for as long as she could remember. Bellatrix had always taken it as a natural occurrence – after all, she had read many a book in which the characters spoke of voices inside their heads. It was only when Bellatrix went to Azkaban that she began to fear her mother's voice.

It had been the very first night that she had been in Azkaban, so soon after the Dark Lord fell, when it all felt like it was more a dream than reality and would end at any moment, when Bellatrix still had fight in her and the Dementors had not been able to suck it out and away from her yet, when she still believed that the Dark Lord would come for her before she had even grown tired of the prison – before she had been in her cell for long enough to realize how difficult, how painful and torturous it truly was – that Druella's voice in her mind had become malevolent.

Bellatrix had been sitting upon the narrow wooden bench that furnished her cell and functioned as both a bed and a seat, and was the only piece of furniture that she had been provided with. She had been sitting still, quietly, listening to the screams of the other prisoners and mentally berating and mocking them for shrieking like children or mad people when she was so brave and strong as to sit silently and without the slightest complaint, and she heard her mother's voice. It had been sharp inside her mind and it had startled her badly.

_For God's sake, Bellatrix, sit up properly. Look at yourself, you're a mess! What will the Lestranges think of you if you look like that?_

The voice had jolted Bellatrix out of the composed silence that she had been sitting in, for she had not heard a human speak – at any rate, she had not heard a human speak in coherent words, for she did not consider the inmates' screaming to be _talking_ – since she had left the courtroom after her sham of a trial. She had barely even thought in words, only allowed her mind to go blank and blurry, housing only the vaguest and most nebulous thoughts and emotions about her situation. Not a single well-formed and coherently articulated idea had been present in her mind, save that the Dark Lord would rise again very soon.

And now, sitting on what passed for her bed, with the wordless and unintelligible shrieking of other inmates dull in her ears, Druella's harsh, clear words cut through her. They cut her straight to her soul.

"Mother?" she whispered out loud.

_Clean yourself! Your hair – look at it, Bellatrix!_

"I can't, Mother, I haven't a looking glass," she told her, a little knot of panic growing in her stomach. The voice pained and frightened her far more than the Dementors, the prisoners, or even Bartimius Crouch, who had looked down on her to judge her like God or an archangel and should have been the most terrifying thing she had seen had.

Druella's voice seemed to be so very close, so very present and _real_ that Bellatrix had to look about her to be sure that her mother was not standing in the cell at her side. She sounded louder in her ear than she had in years – louder in her ear than she had since Bellatrix had been a little girl and Druella really had dared to shout at her.

_Don't have a looking glass – a pathetic excuse! A pathetic excuse for a pathetic little girl!_

Bellatrix pressed her hands over her eyes and drew her knees up against her chest, moving into the corner of her slat bed, pressing her body back against the stones in the corner of her cell, as if doing so would somehow get her further away from her mother's voice. It didn't matter that she knew on every conscious level that there was that her mother's voice was only in her mind, she _needed_ to get away from it. Her chest ached, and it was as though she was having her heart broken… or the bottom of her throat twisted into a knot. Something just below the base of her neck hurt badly, in any case.

"Go away, Mother!" she hissed as bravely as she could. She did not want to raise her voice any further, for fear of the other inmates hearing, but Druella's voice did not even quiet, only continued to berate her. If anything, the more Bellatrix tried to fight it away, with words and movements and trying to silence it by clearing her mind, the louder it became.

_You were not raised for this! You are a lady, a Black, and look at what you have done to yourself! And don't you dare try to blame anyone else – this is your fault, and it is your fault _entirely!

"It isn't, Mother!" Despite all attempts to keep herself quiet, despite how she did not want her fellow prisoners to hear her screaming at her mother, Bellatrix could not stop her voice from rising a little. It did not quite reach the pitch of a scream, but it was loud enough to hear, louder even than her regular speaking voice. She was grateful now for the shrieking of nearby inmates that helped to shield the noises from her cell. "It isn't my fault! _It isn't my fault that I'm here!_"

Bellatrix sounded hysterical, even to her own ears. Hysterical and childish, for she knew that, in a way, it _was_ her fault. After all, she had been caught – and how many times had the Dark Lord schooled his Death Eaters in the art of subtlety? How many times had he told them how crucial it was that they never allow themselves to be caught, or the whole cause would be lost. But, childish as she was, hysterical as she was, _wrong_ as she was, Bellatrix did not care. She did not care right now if she sounded like a madwoman, for that was how she felt when her mother was speaking to her when she was supposed to be a thousand miles away, across the ocean, when she had not really spoken to her daughter since she had joined the Death Eaters years ago, and Bellatrix could not make her go away.

So Bellatrix raised her voice up to join the chorus of the prison, and wailed in agony in hopes of drowning out her mother. Her cries mingled with those of the other men and women imprisoned in the Hell on Earth that was Azkaban, for that high, wavering drone was all that Bellatrix had to force her mother away.

And for a time, she had been at least somewhat successful.

Only when the prison fell silent – a mercifully rare occasion – did Druella's voice creep back into Bellatrix's mind. Only when her whispers could be heard over the noises of the outside world – _the real world, the real world, the real world_ – did she hiss into Bellatrix's ear with all the things that Bellatrix hated to hear her mother say.

_You are a disgrace, Bellatrix, a disgrace! You bring shame to the Black family._

"I am only in prison because I was loyal, Mother," Bellatrix whispered when her mother said such things, clutching her head and rocking back and forth. She shook her head to try to rid herself of the voice, as if she could shake it from her ears like a dog shook water – a mad idea, but Bellatrix was willing to resort to mad ideas. Every passing day made Druella's accusations sting more, made Bellatrix more desperate for release from them. "You taught me to be loyal."

_Leave mindless loyalty to the Hufflepuffs! A Slytherin – and a _Black_, furthermore, knows when to be loyal, and when to preserve herself, her family name_–

"I have no family left to bear the name!" cried Bellatrix, more loudly than she had meant. A few moans echoed from nearby rooms, presumably prisoners that she had woken by her scream. For a moment, she allowed herself to hope that this would rid her of her mother's voice, but their quiet groans were not loud enough to drown out Druella. It was a pleasure, at least, that they were loud enough to remind Bellatrix of the fact that there were other living people near her. Remembering that she was not the only person alive in the world – not the only person here, not the only person locked up in this Hell – was mall comfort, but it was better than nothing, for she was terrified of being alone with her mother's voice. "Who would carry the Black name? All the men of our family have besmirched themselves, and I cannot carry on the name, even if I carry on the blood–"

_You bring shame upon us! You bring shame upon the memories of your ancestors!_

Bellatrix cried into her hands, heaving and sobbing and unable to say any more. Eventually, Druella's voice did quiet with time, when Bellatrix did not react to it for long enough and when the prison began to wake and fill with the cries of the other prisoners to drown her out, but she left Bellatrix in a shaking mess.

People had always told Bellatrix that it was the Dementors in Azkaban prison that drove the inmates insane, and she had no doubt that they did, but she thought that they would not be the reason for her.

If she did manage to survive in Azkaban until the Dark Lord came for her (_she would not even entertain the idea that he might not come. He was coming! He was! He would come for her, and he would reward her for her faith as he would reward none of those who had saved their own skins and stayed out of Azkaban_), she would be quite mad when she was released, she thought. She would be a lunatic by the time she was taken out of the cell, barely able to think and not even knowing her own name. But it would not be the Dementors who put her in that state.

It would be her own mother.


	4. Chapter 4

Bellatrix had dozed off upon the pew with her arms around her head and knees curled to her chest. It was the heaviest sleep that she had been able to have for some time, and it displeased her to be, as she was, awoken by an unfamiliar sound.

Her eyelids, heavy and sticky with sleep, fluttered slowly and stuck before she managed to open them. Almost immediately, she had to press her palms over them again, for the world around her was brighter than any day that she had endured in years. She had become so used to the usual blackness of her cell in Azkaban that the sudden brightness was physically painful.

Bellatrix's mind felt sluggish and slow. It seemed dreadfully unwilling to work or receive for her the signals of what was happening around her, and she shook her head slowly as she tried to think what could have lit up her cell so.

Perhaps she had died in her sleep. Perhaps everything had finally become too much for her body and it had given up, and was now at the gates of Heaven to await her judgement – but if that was the case, why had she not already been sent down to Hell? Surely there could be no argument over whether she was worthy of eternal damnation or not. Heaven could have no reason to take her, could have no reason to even _consider_ taking her, and if she had finally been freed from her body, then why did she feel so terribly sore and stiff…?

Very slowly, Bellatrix lifted one hand from over one eye. She kept the other covered to preserve it, and she looked around only beneath one lowered eyelid, but look around she did.

She was in a church… she was in Heaven, then?

If it was Heaven, then Heaven was a dismal place indeed. She could tell that she was in a church, but it was a dull little Parish one of the sort that she had been forced to attend a handful of times throughout her youth, not the lavish cathedral that she would have expected God to command.

_No… no, not Heaven…_

Perhaps she was in Hell – or Purgatory, at the least – and was awaiting an audience with the Devil, and this was where she had been sent. Yes, that was a far better explanation, for it would account for the corpses littered about the church. They were sprawled over each other on the ground and the pews, like the remnants of some town after a massacre…

But they were not dead… just…

_Sleeping?_

They were moving ever so slowly, some of them, twitching a bit and shifting in their places.

Bellatrix stared at them for a long time with a perplexed expression while she tried to gather what might have happened.

And then the memories came flooding back to her and tears of relief spilled down her cheeks.

Bellatrix pulled herself to her feet, her legs weak but her will strong, and she dragged herself to one of the stained glass windows through which coloured light filtered. She pressed her eye against the glass so that she could stare out at the landscape beyond the window.

_So much _sunlight…

It pained her eyes, but she stared out still in a perhaps vain attempt to drink it all in. She felt as though it was being absorbed into her skin. It filled her with light, with _life._ She had never been so very fond of sunlight, but it had been so long and it was so beautiful…

Bellatrix let out a quiet cry of happiness. Last night, there had been a part of her that still suspected that everything that had occurred might have been a hallucination or a dream, or, perhaps, some cruel vision that God sent upon her to make her imprisonment all the worse, but now she was certain – now she really was free.

"Praise God," she whispered, then lifted her voice, so that all might hear. "Praise God, and praise the Dark Lord!"

Immediately, voices echoed from around her, "Praise the Dark Lord," and she turned to see who else she was sharing this glorious escape with.

There were bodies on the ground, some sleeping, but some with their eyes open. They looed up at her and at the window, and all of them were wearing beatific smiles that matched those in engravings of souls that were being invited at last into Heaven upon the Day of Judgement.

There was Rodolphus, upon the ground not far from the pulpit. He looked so joyous that Bellatrix would have thought that he had been touched by the hand of God himself. And Rabastan – it had been Rabastan who she had seen the Dark Lord heal, had it not? Rabastan was in Rodolphus's arms, his head upon his shoulder and tears running down his face, but there was a smile upon his face that looked as though it had not been there for a very, very long time. There were sores upon his skin that Bellatrix could see, but they looked old and more like scars than real wounds.

"Praise God, and praise the Dark Lord," Rabastan echoed. He looked so very like Rodolphus, so different from how he had been last night and so very happy in his arms (_his brother, and they are close as they should be_), that Bellatrix felt a pang of jealously.

_Rodolphus is my husband, he should not hold anyone else that way – only me!_

She ran her hands through her hair, doing her best to cast away jealousy. Jealousy was a sin, and she did not want to be stained with sin now, not after all of this. She wanted to be pure for the Dark Lord. She wanted to be untarnished by such human sins as jealousy, so that she might be worthy of calling herself his servant.

"Praise be to the Lord," Rabastan continued. His eyes were glazed over, and he rocked slowly in his brother's arms. "Praise be to the Lord, for delivering us…"

There were murmurs from the other men too, murmurs of _praise_ and of _the Dark Lord_, and, again and again, _God_, but Bellatrix paid no mind to them, now that her eyes had lit upon Rodolphus and Rabastan. There were bruises upon Rodolphus's skin, and she could only think that she must have given them to him last night, when she had pushed him upon the cold and frozen ground.

She stared at him, transfixed.

_A long time ago – so long ago that Bellatrix could barely remember when it had been… twenty years back? Longer? _

_She was dressed all in rosy silk that rustled against her legs, and laced so tightly into her corset that she could not breathe but in small and feeble gasps that left her breast heaving and her vision starry. The whole world was a sea of flickering candle flames that glinted off a hundred thousand cut diamonds and crystals that decorated the chandelier. All around her, men and women in handsome robes and gowns swept around the ballroom floor, all moving with such perfect, choreographed grace._

_They were dancing._

_And she was dancing._

Even as the memories came back to her, Bellatrix was vaguely aware of swaying from foot to foot, a half-remembered waltz sweeping through her mind. Her toes curled automatically, perhaps from the memory of how badly the shoes that her mother had made her wear hurt, perhaps because she wanted to dance. The instruments in her thoughts played with tinkling and off-key notes that were barely recognizable as a dance, but still she moved to it.

_A man's hand, broad and strong and powerful, pressed against her back, pressing her against a muscular chest. Her lips brushed lightly against the shell of his ear, and she heard a light, alien laugh._

_Was that _her_ laugh?_

_One… two… three… one… two… three… waltzing forever, dancing forever, into the galaxy of shimmering lights, cut into rainbows by the prisms of the chandelier…_

_She felt breath, hot on her cheek, the scratch of a small beard upon her neck, and heard a low, masculine voice whispering._

"_We ought to go upstairs, Bella – people are staring…"_

"_Let them stare."_

_Let them stare at the happy couple._

_One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three…_

_His hand tightened upon her waist and he laughed. "Cheeky, Bella."_

She blinked, and the glimmering gold light shattered. She was not in a ballroom, and there was no glimmering chandelier that splintered candlelight into millions of shattered rainbow pieces. She had no man's powerful arms around her, no breathless and carefree whisper in her ear. Her body was not laced stiffly into a corset, and the memory of silk against her legs was far away and vague. Her hands moved automatically to her thighs, rubbing the coarse fabric of her prison dress against her skin. It caught on her, and she knew not whether it was because the fabric was rough, or because her skin was.

Slowly, she sank to her knees, turning her face up and closing her eyes, trying to recapture the memory.

_He had taken her arm, pulling her away from the party, and the two of them had laughed. She had picked up her skirts so she did not stumble, and ignored the reproving glares of her parents. She pushed past them, out the door, into the corridor._

_The corridor._

_Long, wood panelled corridor. So familiar a corridor. A corridor that she had walked down so many times that it had become nothing to her, but everything was new and beautiful and bright tonight. His arms had wrapped about her and he had pressed her against the wall, his mouth pressing over hers. Her hand had moved to stroke his hair and her eyelids fluttered shut…_

Something touched Bellatrix's arm, and she jolted violently, slapping out at it. Her eyes flew open in time to see Rodolphus retracting his arm, looking hurt.

"Bellatrix?"

"Do not touch me," she told him in a small and raspy voice. It sounded unconvincing even to her – she sounded too weak and wistful, still half-lost in the memory of kissing…

_God, had it really been him?_

She shut her eyes slowly, trying to conjure the man of her memory to mind that she might compare him with the man kneeling before her now. She could not call his face to mind, no matter how hard she tried, but those hands… those warm and powerful hands that had cupped her and pressed her to the wall…

Opening her eyes once more, Bellatrix looked down upon Rodolphus's hands. They were scarred, the fingernails so caked with grime that they looked black, and ragged all around the tips, but there was something that was a touch familiar about them. Perhaps it was the blunt, square shape of the fingertips, or the way he held them, the littlest finger curled up and the index finger almost straight, as though he was holding the stem of a long wine glass, or perhaps the neck of a violin.

Had Rodolphus played the violin? She thought he had, but perhaps…

She closed her eyes again, trying to summon to mind an image of him with the instrument in his hands…

_Bright sunlight streamed through a window, which afforded a view of beautiful gardens and far-away hills, but Bellatrix was not looking there. She had eyes only for the man who sat upon his stool, a music stand before him, head bent so that long, dusky auburn hair fell over his forehead. He had a violin in one hand and the bow in the other, and he was studying the music upon the stand with such intensity that she would have thought it a spell book._

"_Why do you not simply enchant the violin to play the music for you, Rodolphus? Would that not be so much easier?"_

"_There can be no satisfaction in that, Bella. Don't you know?"_

"_I see no reason why effort should be more satisfying than lack of effort."_

"_Spoken like a woman who is not a musician."_

_He laughed as he said it, and she did too, for their teasing was all in the best of nature. Rodolphus raised the violin to his chin and it against his neck, and placed the bow to the strings, and then he was dragging it over and over them, playing and playing and Bellatrix had to bite her lips to stop from smiling too widely._

_She was so _happy…

"She is ill," she heard someone say from a very great distance away. There was no panic in their voice, only dull acceptance. "She is ill. She is going to die."

"She is not going to die." Passion was there, but only the slightest blush of it, just enough for whoever was speaking to sound quite _sure_ that she wasn't going to die, but not enough to destroy all doubt from it.

"Who's going to die?" Bellatrix could barely conjure words, but if someone was dying…

"You see? She'll be well soon…"

"What's happening?" Bellatrix blinked three times before the church came into focus in her eyes again. "Who's going to die?"

"No one is going to die."

Rabastan was leaning over her… leaning over her… she had ended up on her back, she supposed, for she was staring straight up at the rafters, and men were crowded all around her. Rabastan and Rodolphus were the closest – close enough that she could seen the scars covering Rabastan's skin from the leprosy – but when she turned her head a little bit, she could see other people all hovering around her.

"Am I dying?" she asked, a note of panic rising in her voice. She reached out and grasped at Rodolphus with clawed hands. Her nails tore through his shirt, pulling him down nearly on top of her. "Am I going to die?"

"You aren't going to die," Rabastan told her softly. "None of us shall die, now that the Dark Lord has saved us. We are all safe, and you most of all…"

"Why her most of all?" demanded someone from a distance away. It was a voice that Bellatrix thought that she remembered, screaming in Azkaban, but it sounded different when it was not a hoarse and high-pitched wail. "The Dark Lord cannot care for her more than the rest of us!"

"Oh, but he can."

Bellatrix sat up slowly, but stars sprung into her vision again and she collapsed. Were it not for Rodolphus, she would have cracked her head upon the floorboards, but he caught her, cradling her head and setting her down gently upon the floor. She stared up at him, vision going in and out of focus.

_And now he was the man with the violin, and now the ravaged and destroyed creature from Azkaban, and now the man with the violin again._

"Rodolphus?" she whispered.

"Bellatrix."

"Did you play the violin?" she asked, reaching up to touch his cheek. His face was all hollowed, his cheeks as concave as a skull's and the skin every bit as white as bone. He blinked down at her, wiping something pale and crusty from his dark eyes.

"The violin?" he asked blankly.

"The violin," she repeated, then lifted her hands, mimicking the stroking of a bow upon violin strings to indicate her meaning to him. "Did you ever play the violin?"

He stared at her, and she stared back, and panic rose in her throat. If he didn't? If he had never touched a violin in his life? Then she was mad, and that memory, which had seemed so vivid and clear inside her mind was all a concoction of her brain, and if that was so, then was this real? If she could believe such things to be so completely true and have them be false, then how did she know that she was not still upon the wooden slats of the board-cot in Azkaban, and that this was not just some elaborate dream or fantasy – perhaps one that her mind was concocting before she slipped into death…

"I played the violin…" he said quietly, then raised his own hands, to mimic what she was doing, and hummed under his breath. Bellatrix watched him with wide, relieved eyes, and the way that his hands moved was ever so slowly, shaking a bit, but in perfect time to the tune that he was quietly singing. And if Bellatrix closed her eyes, she could _almost_ imagine that he was playing his violin for her again…

"_You play far better than Narcissa," she told him, a teasing note in her voice as he set the violin down and closed his music book._

"_And that is no compliment. Your sister sounds as though she is strangling a sparrow when she plays."_

_Bellatrix laughed, for it was true. She said as much to Cissy next time the two of them were alone – God help Bellatrix if she dared to insult her sister in her parents' company – and Narcissa looked haughty and said that Bellatrix was only jealous, and perhaps she was, for she could not play the violin at all… she did not even try… _

But music was the realm of those who had not the strength for other tasks. And Bellatrix did have strength.


	5. Chapter 5

After the initial pleasure of being free from Azkaban passed, things changed – things changed and began to drag on endlessly. The first few days were miraculous enough that Bellatrix could be entertained simply by rediscovering the things that she had forgotten while in Azkaban – how tall she was, for example. In Azkaban, she had been perpetually hunched or curled over, but now, she was able to stand tall and straight, and it was nothing if not enjoyable to be able to straighten her spine and look down on others. But enjoyment of the simple miracles of life could only last for a finite amount of time, and there was nothing to be done in the church, save praying – which Bellatrix did near constantly – and reading and re-reading the battered old Gospels that lay upon each pew. She tried to do that, for she knew that many of the men were finding the stories a suitable way to pass their time, but the words swam before her eyes when Bellatrix tried to look at them, and, unlike the Bibles that her family – and Rodolphus's – had always kept, these ones had no illustrations that she could amuse herself with. There were no woodcut devils or watercolour angels decorating the pages, no simple little ink sketches, even, just page upon page upon page of endless, tiny text.

And so she gave up and allowed herself to devote every moment of her time to prayer and to thought of the Dark Lord.

With every sunrise that lit the church, Bellatrix hoped that that day would be the day that he would come and take them to some new hiding place. Perhaps a hiding place where others could visit them. Bellatrix so missed Narcissa – it felt as though a thousand years had passed since she had last seen her, and now that she was freed, she felt her sister's absence all the more strongly. Why did the Dark Lord not bring her to see her?

_Perhaps Narcissa no longer supports our cause._

She must have said _something_ to stay out of Azkaban and Bellatrix did not begrudge her little sister that – Narcissa did not have the strength of will to stay faithful to their Lord when she could believe him to be dead and when the option was Azkaban. She would have broken and that would have been a thousand times worse than her simply being a mild traitor. But as Bellatrix sat in the church and stewed over the matter, she wondered whether, perhaps, the Dark Lord _did_ begrudge her… whether she, Narcissa, was no longer good enough to be allowed to know that he had risen again… whether even _Lucius_ might not be good enough for that…

The very idea sickened Bellatrix. Could it be that her sister was so much of a traitor in the Dark Lord's eyes that he had not so much as told her that Bellatrix had been freed and was safe?

Or perhaps it was simply not the Dark Lord's priority to tell a woman who had not even been a Death Eater that her sister was free. Perhaps the Dark Lord was simply waiting for a more opportune time, a better and safer time to tell those who had escaped Azkaban that their more faithful compatriots had been freed.

That was what she tried to tell herself.

Bellatrix sat up from the pew upon which she had been lying, wringing her hands nervously. She had had no word from her sister in years – not since she had been sent to Azkaban. Narcissa had never visited, surely thinking the prison beneath her, and thinking that seeing her sister would reflect poorly on her. After all, she was supposed to shun her after she had been accused of being a Death Eater. She, Bellatrix, was not the sort to beg for copies of the Daily Prophet from the few people who did visit, and she had had little news from the outside world… was it possible that something had happened to Narcissa years ago and she had never heard? Perhaps she – the only relative Bellatrix had left who she was willing to call a relative – had died somehow, and no one had ever thought to tell Bellatrix. Perhaps Narcissa had died without a second thought for her sister and laid cold in the ground now and Bellatrix had never known…

How could Bellatrix be sure if she had? There was no one to ask – even now that she was no longer in Azkaban, she was as good as imprisoned. She had still had no contact with the rest of the world, not even with the Dark Lord, and for all she knew, there _was_ no outside world left, except for the church…

Bellatrix's heart pounded beneath her ribs, and her breath came in short, panicked gasps. Deprived of air, her mind became foggy and stars popped before her eyes. She dragged herself to the alter, stumbling over the bodies of the people who lay between her and it, her feet catching in their dirty robes and the Bibles and hymn books that they left stacked upon the floor. She threw herself down before the pulpit and all she could whisper, over and over, was "_Oh, please, God, let my sister be safe_," for she could not remember the words to any real prayer.

"Bellatrix," she heard Rodolphus say from a great distance away, but Bellatrix could scarcely hear for the pounding of blood in her ears. Sweat poured off her skin and she let out tiny, whimpering moans that mingled with her praying.

_Please, let her be safe, God, please, she never did anything wrong and I need her, I need her, God…_

"Bellatrix!"

Bellatrix whirled around. "Have you never been taught that it is a sin to interrupt one who is praying?" she demanded of Rodolphus, who was hovering a step behind her, looking worried.

"I only wanted you to stop before you made yourself ill… you look ill…"

"I am not ill!" she snapped viciously at him, scuttling backwards across the stones to get away from him. He was leaning close and she did not like it – it made her nervous. "I was only praying…"

"What were you praying for?"

At the sound of the all but unfamiliar voice, both Bellatrix and Rodolphus turned around. Standing several steps away, gripping a pew to stay upright and looking ashen but determined…

Bellatrix squinted at him and tilted her head. There were ten of them in the church, but Bellatrix avoided the others, and had not exchanged glances, much less words, with anyone save for Rodolphus and Rabastan. She was not entirely sure she recognized this man either… though surely she must have, if he had been a Death Eater.

He had a thin, pointed face, not altogether different from Rabastan's, but his hair was ashy blonde instead of the dark reddish brown that both Lestranges possessed. It was so caked with dirt that it looked more like fabric than hair, and hung over his eyes, framing them – shielding them, rather, for they were small and beady and seemed to retreat into his skull.

"It isn't your concern, Antonin," Rodolphus told him.

_Antonin._

_Antonin._

Bellatrix thought that she could hear a female voice, a voice vaguely familiar, though she could not have named it. She was whispering his name, Bellatrix could just hear, but she had to strain her ears…

_Bellatrix hovered a few steps away from a gossiping pair of women. She leaned casually against the wall to try to listen in without drawing attention to herself because listening to gossip was the only thing worth doing at parties. The women were turned away from her, and she could only see their elaborate hair and the backs of their fine gowns, but their whispers carried._

"_Antonin Dolohov, he is called. I can hardly believe – my sons, joining up with that poor excuse for a boy…"_

_If Bellatrix was not mistaken, it was the woman with the darker hair who said that. Bellatrix would not have been able to tell, save for the fact that her voice was slurred and she had observed the darker woman drinking several glasses of wine over the course of the evening. The other woman, the blonde, glanced back over her shoulder, and though Bellatrix looked away quickly, she thought that she had been caught staring. _

"_Be quiet, Maria, Bellatrix is listening again", she murmured, _

_Bellatrix fluttered away quickly, before anything more could be said, but the name echoed in her mind, growing softer each time, but still – always – present._

Antonin Dolohov.

"Antonin Dolohov?"

The words sounded different from her lips than they had in the lower, richer voice of the woman she remembered, but Antonin nodded. He looked at her suspiciously… or perhaps it was not suspicion, and that was simply how he looked at everyone, with those odd, dark eyes.

"What were you praying for?" he asked her again.

"I said that it was none of–" Rodolphus began, but Antonin cut him off.

"It is for her to say whether it is my concern of not, not for you."

Rodolphus snarled under his breath, sounding very like a mad dog, Bellatrix thought. Yes, very like a mad dog indeed…

"I was praying for…" Bellatrix had to think for a minute to recall, for everything she had seemed to remember had deserted her. Other memories and thoughts had clouded what she had been thinking before. She touched her throat absently while she tried to recall, scratching at the skin with light, delicate touches of her fingernails. If she had only scratched herself just a little harder, she might have been able to cut beautiful, jagged zigzags into her flesh, but as it was, she barely even made herself register pain.

_If only she could have. If only she could have felt something like a self-inflicted wound, maybe it would have brought her down to Earth, maybe it would have cleared her mind…_

"My sister," she said at last, when the memory returned to her. "I was praying for my sister."

"What of your sister?" asked Rodolphus, but Antonin interrupted him with a sneer.

"_Which_ sister?"

"Which?" Bellatrix blinked slowly and chewed on the inside of her bottom lip.

_Cissy is my sister, what other sister…_

Oh.

Andromeda.

_The bed was empty, and made up as it had never been before. Andromeda had always left her covers in a mess, rumpled and pushed to the foot of the bed. Bellatrix and Narcissa had teased her, sometimes, that she didn't think that it was worth her time to make the bed when she would be ruining it with some boy later in the evening. Andromeda had always laughed when they said this._

_But now it was made so neatly, and there was a note upon the pillow that Bellatrix would never read. She did not want to read it. She never, ever wanted to think about her sister again._

"Narcissa," she told Antonin, her voice lowering to a venomous hiss. "Do you think I would _ever_ pray for the other one? She is a blood traitor – a whore! She is no sister of mine, not any longer!"

Antonin said nothing, and Bellatrix broke off, her chest heaving and every breath clawing at her throat. She stood up slowly, steadying herself upon the alter (her hand left a grimy smear upon the white fabric that made anger at herself clench in her throat), and then backed away, giving Antonin the harshest glare that she could manage.

He watched her as she went, and only when she was sitting upon her pew again, teeth bared slightly, did he turn away and retreat to whatever dark corner of the church he had taken to inhabiting for long enough that she had not seen him until now.

Rodolphus scowled as he went, even more fiercely than Bellatrix had.

"Bastard," he hissed beneath his breath, then turned to Bellatrix. "What did you pray for about your sister Narcissa?"

She did not tell him. She did not tell him how afraid she was that Narcissa was dead, and she did not tell him that she would have given near anything at that moment to know that she was safe. She did not say how badly it strained her to know so little about what was happening in the world around her.

She did not say her fear, unspoken even to herself in anything more than the quietest and most mutinous whisper at the very back of her mind, that the Dark Lord might not be returning for them.

That was what she feared most.

If something had happened to Narcissa – even something so terrible as being deemed a traitor by the Dark Lord and killed at his hands – Bellatrix might still find the will to go on. She would still have her cause, the cause that she had devoted all her adult life to. If Narcissa were dead, as much as it would hurt, Bellatrix would still have something within her that gave her strength.

But if the Dark Lord were dead, then that would disappear.

If the Dark Lord were dead, then Bellatrix would have nothing. She would _be_ nothing. She could not expect – did not expect – any other wizard to take his place, either as the leader of the Death Eaters, or as the man – the person much greater than a man – that he was to her. She could not expect anyone else to be able to fill such a position.

_But the Dark Lord cannot die. He did not die before, he only fell, and now he is risen again._

The mark still burned shone upon her arm – it did not fade as it had when he had fallen. Surely if the Dark Lord were dead, then she would know…

_It was such a warm night. There was barely a bite in the air to indicate that winter might be approaching, even with the glass doors thrown wide. A slight breeze shifted the diaphanous white curtains, making them whisper. The moon hung bright and as golden as the sun over the skeletal trees, which had some leaves still clinging to them, and everything was still, absolutely still…_

_And then agony._

_Bellatrix's body convulsed – she had not been expecting the pain and it was a thousand times worse than any Cruciatus curse could ever be. Her heart was being torn out, her brain bashed to pieces against her skull, and her arm – oh God, her arm!_

_Lying at her side, Rodolphus screamed, his own body shaking and twisting in the sheets, but Bellatrix's pain was beyond screams. She could not draw breath. She was dying, she thought, surely nothing except death could feel this way._

_But it subsided at last, and when it did, Bellatrix lay in a pool of sweat – that of her and that of her husband – and she could barely conjure up the energy to raise one still-burning arm to look at it._

_She had expected the flesh to be all carved away from the bone, she had expected it to be blackened like the skin of that Mudblood girl whom she had pushed into a fire during a mission not so very long ago, but no. Her arm was all silk smooth white skin, perfect and pristine as freshly fallen snow._

Too_ perfect and pristine._

_Rodolphus… she whispered, terror in her tremulous voice, my mark is gone._

The mark had not been gone, not entirely, only reduced to a faint, scar-like shadow. But in the dark, with her eyes all filled with tears of pain, Bellatrix had not been able to see it.

_Rodolphus had not been able to respond. His chest heaved, and it seemed to be all he could do to stop his screams, even now that the pain had ceased. Bellatrix grasped at him, her fingers scrabbling and slipping over his sweat-soaked sink._

_Rodolphus, something's happened! Something's gone wrong!_

Hurts…

_The Dark Lord, Rodolphus! Something's become of the Dark Lord!_

Oh, she had had so little idea of what might have become of him, only that it was terrible. She had been more afraid then than she had thought possible…

But no such thing had happened now. Bellatrix looked at her arm and the mark blazed there as clearly as ever, stinging a little at her touch. The Dark Lord could not be dead, for if he were, then there would have been agony like she had experienced that night.

But he had not come for them.

Since that first night, Bellatrix had not heard of him, and he had not come to the church. What then?

_He has abandoned you, he has left you all here to rot._

_Dear God, no…_ Bellatrix had not allowed herself to consider the prospect, and it made her ill. _No, the Dark Lord could not have left us. He couldn't, he hasn't! God, no…_

_But if he has_?

"No…" she whispered out loud, rocking back and forth. _No, no, no, no, no! No, please, no…_

She staggered to her feet again, this time moving not in the direction of the alter, but of the doors. She had not been outside since that first night, and desperately needed to get out of the church, if only for seconds. The very building seemed to be glaring down upon her, taunting her with threats of a Lord who had abandoned her.

_He would not, he could not abandon me, I am his most faithful, his most faithful, his most faithful…_

_Oh, but he could abandon you._

"No!"

She grasped at the door handles, but could not make the doors come open. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she wrenched at them.

It was so very like being in prison again.

_The first and second weeks had gone by easily. Bellatrix had woken every morning expecting the mark to be reappearing on her arm, but she did not lose faith or hope when it did not. Not much time had passed – she could not expect the Dark Lord to rise again within weeks when all the people who could have assisted him were in Azkaban or hiding like the cowards that they were. No matter, he would rise soon._

_By the third week, Azkaban had begun to sting. Boredom had never been an emotion that Bellatrix found easy to endure, and it had become a staple of her life now that she was imprisoned. She had no one with whom to speak, no books to read or parchment to write upon, and she could do nothing but sit upon her plank of a bed and try to fight the overwhelming misery that surrounded the Dementors – and her – every second._

_But still she stayed stoic, strong. Not much longer now before the Dark Lord shall rise again, she told herself. And then she would be rewarded…_

_But he did not rise._

_And with every day that went by, every endlessly long day, the tiny, gnawing fear in the corner of Bellatrix's stomach that he would _not_ rise again became a little stronger. She tried to fight it down, but it was there, always there._

_It was the fifth week that marked her loss of control._

_It was as a Dementor glided past, slow and almost lazy in its movements, that she flung herself against the bars with a great and terrible scream, worthy of the souls flung into Hell._

_She _was_ a soul flung into Hell._

_She screamed and clawed at it with ragged fingernails, though it glided past her without second thought. Her screams meant nothing to such a creature. A human, even the cruellest and coldest of humans, would have paused – to enjoy her torment, if nothing else. But the Dementor did not care…_

_Bellatrix had beaten herself half to death against the bars when she fell unconscious, and she knew not how long she lay upon the ground, unable to move or even to think, before she managed to draw herself back up and collapse upon what passed as a bed for her._

She could still feel the imprints of the bars upon her skin, after so many years. Had she not hit her temple against one rusty bar and slipped unconscious, Bellatrix had no doubt that she would have killed herself by those bars. Thoughts of remaining strong for the Dark Lord had disappeared entirely then, and she had been able to think nothing save _free me, free me now._

And now she felt the same, beating herself against the church doors. But this time, someone took her by her shoulders and pulled her back.

She did not fight. It seemed to be Rodolphus's self-imposed duty to protect her now – why should she stop him? She went limp in his arms as he dragged her away from the doors, and into a niche where once she expected a statue – or even two – might have stood. It was empty now, save for a scratchy, knitted shawl wrapped around Rabastan's thin body. He moved backwards, making room as Rodolphus lay her down beside him.

Rodolphus moved away after that, leaving his wife and his brother curled in the niche, and Bellatrix drew her knees up to her chest, occasionally casting Rabastan suspicious glances.

He was rocking slowly back and forth, lips parted and eyes focussed somewhere high up and far away. Bellatrix followed his gaze, wondering if perhaps there was some stained glass window or perhaps a bat hanging from the rafters that he was looking at, but no, he was merely staring at a corner of the ceiling.

Staring off as though that corner held all the answers to every mystery of the universe.

"What are you looking at?" she demanded of him, much more harshly than she had intended. Rabastan jumped, shrinking back from her.

He had a nervous look about him, even more than all the other men. Even more than Bellatrix.

He had always had a nervous look about him.

_Rodolphus was at her hand at the dinner table, his leg occasionally brushing against hers beneath it. The rather coarse fabric of his trousers scratched slightly against her, and sent tingling thrills up her legs, into her lower belly. She glanced at him through lowered eyelashes, only for a second, then let her eyes rest once more upon her plate._

_A soft hiss from across the table, and she raised her eyes. Directly opposite her, a thin, sickly man – boy – glaring at her out of sunken eyes that were cloudy with illness. His lips were twisted into a frown, peppered with red, and as she watched, he sank his teeth into them again, biting down hard. Blood pooled around the bite marks, and when he released his lip, a droplet ran down the centre, dripping onto his chin._

_Bellatrix could not restrain the tiniest of titters, and he wiped it away swiftly, hollow cheeks colouring._

Jealous?_ she mouthed at him._

_He flinched as though he had been slapped and looked away, and Bellatrix cast her eyes once more upon Rodolphus, who met them with a cruel little smirk at his brother's expense._

Poor Rabastan, _he breathed in her ear._

_Rabastan – sickly, weak, poor little Rabastan – looked away, fixing his eyes on the ceiling so that he need not look at Bellatrix or Rodolphus._


	6. Chapter 6

When night fell, Bellatrix did not move any closer to Rabastan, or any further away, or at all. Rodolphus had not come back for them, and she had no will to move, any more than Rabastan had strength to. He had only rocked slowly back and forth, and whispered words so softly that even Bellatrix, not even a foot away from him, could begin to make out what he was saying, and she had not moved at all.

She had thought, though. She had thought much about Rabastan.

It was easier to think of him than of her sisters, or of the Dark Lord.

_Rabastan lay in bed, racked with coughing. His body trembled and shook with every rattling breath that he took in, and he stared up at his brother with wide, teary eyes. Bellatrix hovered at the back of the darkened room, hidden in shadows._

"You aren't going to live long like this, you know, Rab."

"What do you care?"

Rabastan's voice was accusatory, made even harsher by the way it scraped over every syllable, all harsh and scratching. Rodolphus took half a step backwards, and Bellatrix bared her teeth in a harsh and predatory little grin.

"What do I care? You're my brother!"

"Not that it matters to you. If it were your precious wife who was sick, then you wouldn't hesitate to spend every second at her side…"

"Too right," Bellatrix said, and Rabastan glared over his shoulder at her. She fell silent again, lounging against the wall to watch the fight.

"You see, even she knows it! You'd have every healer out of the hospital to care for her, but with me… with me, you just don't care, do you?"

"You know that that's not true, Rabastan." Rodolphus's voice was ice cold. "I care. You know that I care."

"Prove it, then!" he challenged, sitting up in bed, and even from a distance, Bellatrix could see an almost mad gleam in his eyes. "Prove that you care!"

"How do you expect me to do that, Rabastan?"

"Kill her."

"That's the fever talking, Rabastan. You wouldn't say things like that. You don't mean that."

"Oh, do I not? What makes you so sure that I don't? You have no idea what I mean, Rodolphus, you have no idea how I think!"

"No, I do not, I'll grant you that. I've no idea what's coming over you, that you want my wife dead."

"She is a whore!" Rabastan cried, pointing one finger at her like a child accusing another child of some minor crime that seemed so great to a young person. "She doesn't love you! She's having an affair with the–"

Bellatrix snarled and flew forward. Rodolphus tried to catch her and hold her back, but she threw him off of her and pounced upon Rabastan, shaking him violently. His neck snapped back and forth, his frail body all but breaking beneath her hands. She slapped him hard across his face.

"Don't you say that! That's a lie!"

"It's not," he hissed between teeth gritted with pain. "It's not a lie, it's true, everyone knows that it is!"

"Do not say a word!"

"Get off him, Bellatrix!"

She was clawing at Rabastan's eyes with her nails, and he screamed, throwing up his arms to protect his face. Her fingers caught the skin of his arm, tearing wide crimson gashes into the pale flesh.

"Get off, Bella! You'll kill him!"

"He deserves it! He is spreading lies about me!"

Rodolphus had to haul her off, and if she had been able to turn her attention to fighting him instead of clawing at his brother, he would not have been able to get a hold of her. As it was, he dragged her, kicking and screaming, off the bed and dragged her out of the room, slamming the door behind them.

"Are you mad, Bellatrix?"

"I do not like being talked about!"

"You could have killed him!"

"I don't care! I don't care!"

Her voice was a hysterical cry, and she smacked Rodolphus's hands as he tried to embrace her. Tears stung in her eyes, tears of fury and humiliation.

"You aren't, are you?"

"Aren't what?" she demanded, dashing at her eyes with the back of her hands.

"Aren't sleeping with–"

"Not you too! You know that I'm not…" She forced herself to soften her voice as she shook her head, letting out a titter as though the idea were ludicrous to her now. Rodolphus looked at her suspiciously, and the laugh fell away from her lips. "I'm faithful to you, Rodolphus. You know that."

"I wonder sometimes…"

"Because your mad brother is planting ideas in your mind! Think about it, Rod – you don't really believe that I would have the nerve to stand here and lie to you about it…"

"Do I not believe that?"

Her eyes narrowed and she took a step backwards. "You do not trust me, Rod?"

"I know better than to trust you."

"How can you say that?"

"I've seen what happens to those who place their trust in you."

"And what do you mean by that?" she demanded, planting her hands on her hips and glaring at him. "I am not a liar, Rodolphus!"

"Oh, but you are…"

She slapped him, just one firm blow, and he winced, clutching his cheek.

"Do not talk to your wife that way," she told him, then turned and stormed off with all the dignity that she could muster.

Did she hate Rabastan for that? She looked at him suspiciously, but could not quite muster up hatred. A mild sort of dislike felt as though it was hanging between them, but not real _hatred._Not even close.

_Should _she have hated him?

Bellatrix pondered this, looking at the slender, broken man at her side. Yes, perhaps she should have – she should hate anyone who spread lies about her.

_Lies. Lies._

_Were they lies?_

She pursed her lips slightly, pressing her hands over her eyes and trying to recall exactly what gossip he had spread about her. It had angered her, she remembered, but she couldn't quite recall why…

_She is having an affair with the–_

With the?

With someone who would not have been pleased to be gossiped about…

_Had she had an affair?_

Bellatrix let out a small, strangled sob, loud enough for Rabastan, at her side, to jolt and look at her.

"What is it?" he asked, and Bellatrix shook her head wildly.

"I can't remember!" she breathed, clutching her head and digging her nails roughly into her scalp. "I can't remember if I did or if I didn't!"

The other Death Eaters were gathering close to her now, watching as she sobbed dryly and rocked back and forth, her voice breaking with every desperate moan.

She did not care. Let them look. Let them stare at her as though she was mad – she didn't care!

Rabastan reached out to lay a spindly hand upon her arm, but Bellatrix smacked it away, scurrying backwards and tumbling out of the alcove at the feet of one of the other men. She clutched at his robes to heave herself to her feet, not stopping to look at him, stumbling away backwards.

_Can't remember, can't remember anything…_

She had been aware of how broken her mind was. She had been aware that thoughts and memories would come back in hazes and snippets when triggered, only turning clear when she focussed properly on them, but this…

If she had had an affair so important to her that she had been willing to near tear Rabastan apart over gossip being spread about it, if something in her life had meant _that much_to her and if she had forgotten it now… no, then that was all wrong. If that was the case, then…

"God help me…" she whispered, clutching her head again and stumbling backwards, away from the little knot of men – Rodolphus among them – all frozen and afraid to move to help her. "God help me, God help me, God help me…" She sang it under her breath, a deranged little mantra, and with every word of her frail little prayer, she wished with everything she had that she might regain the _self_ that would know if she had had an affair, the self that she had been before Azkaban, the _Bellatrix Black, Bellatrix Lestrange, the Dark Lord's most faithful servant…_

"God help me, God help me, God help me…"

The church was blurring and fading in front of her eyes, her vision swimming as she backed up still further.

_God help me, God help me, God help me…_

"God help me…"

She hit a wall, still clutching her head, and looked around, eyes wide open. The light from one stand of candles was all that was illuminating the little church, and it looked not like any group of candlesticks she had ever seen. Bellatrix stared at it with eyes stretched so wide that she could feel the air sucking moisture out of them, her nails clawing at her scalp and face, and as the flames gathered into a seething mass of golden and crimson light, Bellatrix watched demons emerging and approaching her.

They were beautiful demons, not the ones of her nightmares, not the ones of her mother's book. These were no rag-clad skeletons, bearing pitchforks to prod the souls in Hell, mouths open in constant screams of agony. She stared with eyes that could focus on nothing else as the fire twisted and writhed, and then…

He stepped out of the fire as easily as one might step out of a pool of water. His arms were outstretched before him, welcoming her into an embrace, but he was all flame and when she reached for him, he singed her hands and she watched the skin turn black. She clutched at him in the air, but could not grip his body no matter how she tried. When she thought that she had caught his fingers, it was only the bare bone of the candle stand, and when she grabbed at his robes, it was only flame and alter cloth.

And still he looked at her, an angel among his creeping fairy devils, who twisted and turned in the air, writhing in agony even as they stretched into enticingly beautiful positions. They were glorious, they were lovely, but _he…_

"Master," Bellatrix whispered, staring into the flaming pits of his eye sockets. She had moved so close now that she could feel the skin peeling from her face, and the fiery vision of the Dark Lord raised one hand and laid it upon her forehead.

She felt a surge of pain unlike any she had felt before, and then she was upon the ground.

She was vaguely aware of her head hitting the ground – even more vaguely aware of a scream from somewhere far away, and of a stinging in her flesh – but it was all right. She wasn't hurting now.

_She was all right._

_Everything was all right._

She remembered.


End file.
